I ran across an insightful article this week by Chris Clayman, “Reaching the Nations through Our Cities.” Clayman isn’t trying to siphon efforts away from international missions, but points out that we can’t overlook the access we have to many of the same unreached people groups within our own time zone. Some excerpts:
“American Christians are much better at missions among unreached peoples overseas than in our own homeland. The Himalayas present some of the harshest terrain in the world, yet Western missionaries have dotted the Himalayan landscape for centuries. While Americans have many missionaries on the ground in the region, Sherpa and representatives of other Himalayan peoples have left their home and migrated to places like New York City where a dearth of focused evangelism and church planting are taking place among them.
“To punctuate this reality, a Sherpa association bought a Christian church building in Queens in 2011 for over a million dollars that formerly housed around 7 Christian congregations. They have converted the building into a Buddhist temple. While some American Christians prefer to describe such proceedings as invasions, the diversity and influx of immigrants into America over the last few decades, coupled with technological developments making international communication cheap and easy, have presented American Christians with an unparalleled opportunity in missions to spread the gospel among unreached peoples from our own homeland back to their country of origin.
“With mission work among unreached peoples in the U.S. at a pioneering stage, new networks, initiatives, and innovations will need to be developed to move the work forward. A New York City pastor with a long tenure in the city once turned to me and commented on our work among unreached immigrants. He said, ‘It is an idea whose time has come.’ It was one hundred years ago that New York pastor Edward Judson said, ‘Our heavenly Father deemed it wise to put in the hearts of the heathen to come from all parts of the world to our shores, paying their own expenses.’ Thousands of immigrants flock into our cities every year in search of the American dream. May we not be so wrapped up in the American dream ourselves that we falter an unprecedented opportunity to walk across the street, move to the other side of town, or travel across country to welcome strangers—into our lives and into His kingdom.”
